The CrossFit Games Has Undeleted its Facebook Page

Ten months after loudly deleting their account, CrossFit is back on Facebook!

In one of the more bizarre entries in CrossFit’s ling list of public beefs — which includes their feuds with Big Soda and the NSCA, which are actually listed in a section of their site called “battles” — the Facebook and Instagram pages of both CrossFit and the CrossFit Games were deleted last May. Combined, they had over 10 million followers.

Why? They listed eight reasons:

1. Facebook collects and aggregates user information and shares it with state and federal authorities, as well as security organizations from other countries.
2. Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM.
3. Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies.
4. Facebook collects, aggregates, and sells user information as a matter of business. Its business model allows governments and businesses alike to use its algorithmically conjured advertising categories as sophisticated data-mining and surveillance tools.
5. Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice.
6. Facebook, as a matter of business and principle, has weak intellectual property protections and is slow to close down IP theft accounts.
7. Facebook has poor security protocols and has been subject to the largest security breaches of user data in history.

And then there’s the eighth reason, apparently their principle reason, which claimed that Facebook acts

in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease

CrossFit’s founder Greg Glassman explained that the catalyst was Facebook deleting a group for the Banting 7 Day Meal Plan, a group that espoused the benefits of low-carb, high-fat diets and counted over 1.6 million members. It was then reinstated, then deleted, then reinstated, and Glassman ultimately decided no more. He was done with Facebook and Instagram. (Which is owned by Facebook.)

But slowly, they’ve been returning to the omnipresent social media platforms.

In November, the Instagram page @crossfittraining resurfaced.

In February, the CrossFit Games reappeared on Instagram.

And this week, the CrossFit Games came back to Facebook. All 2.7 million followers appear to be intact.

The Facebook and Instagram pages for CrossFit, Inc. — they used to have separate pages on both platforms for HQ and for the Games — are still MIA. Whether they’ll make their own triumphant returns to the company and its “utopian socialists” remains to be seen.

Featured image via @sarasigmunds and @sevenamphotography on Instagram